I'm going to give it a shot with my W. Florida team in the upcoming seasons, so I'm looking for advice from anyone who's tried it before.
I'll have good team knowledge in the zone by the end of next season, 4 of my 5 freshman (will be sophomores) have some press knowledge and I'm hoping some of the recruits I bring in this year will too.
I'm wondering if it's more beneficial to have one grade better than the other or just practicing them the same amount. Also if you would practice one more than the other which would it be? At first I thought zone since it's the defense you play in the half-court, but since press is more foul prone it might need a higher IQ to be successful. Have any coaches noticed a big difference in fouls with defensive IQ?

I've never tried this before. I hope a vet who HAS will help you out. Maybe you can post here to update on how it's going.

I did that a few seasons ago at SMU.    I think I generated about 3-4 more steals than just running zone.  Most of my IQ's were in the C/B range.   I don't remember there being excessive fouling.

On my younger teams that run press, I often switch to FCP/ZONE against "veteran" teams that live at the FT line, (in theory) to help reduce the amount of fouls I commit. I've never noticed a spike in FG% but have noticed a decrease in fouls. I have no statistical backing for this but it seems to work, I don't have any minutes designated to practicing the zone and most the time the zone IQs are around the D- to D+ range. That being said I used this theory last night in my final 4 game and although I only committed around 27 fouls he still went to the line like 40 some times and I lost but I would have to believe I would have committed more than the 27 just running press. I knew I was overmatched before the game was played so I tried to mix things up.

My results have been the same as what TrentonJoe said. I pick up a few more steals running the combo than I would just running a zone. I didn't notice any significant increase in fouls. The only downside is I lose minutes running both and sacrifice a little bit of max IQ in the primary (instead of running 5-6 A+ zone IQ guys, I'll have 1-2 and maybe 3-4 for A- IQ guys).

Maybe barretchap will stop by the forums. He ran it pretty successfully at shaw in knight D2 for a little while and elsewhere to, I thnk

Posted by mikvitu on 4/28/2014 4:27:00 PM (view original):
I'm going to give it a shot with my W. Florida team in the upcoming seasons, so I'm looking for advice from anyone who's tried it before.
I'll have good team knowledge in the zone by the end of next season, 4 of my 5 freshman (will be sophomores) have some press knowledge and I'm hoping some of the recruits I bring in this year will too.
I'm wondering if it's more beneficial to have one grade better than the other or just practicing them the same amount. Also if you would practice one more than the other which would it be? At first I thought zone since it's the defense you play in the half-court, but since press is more foul prone it might need a higher IQ to be successful. Have any coaches noticed a big difference in fouls with defensive IQ?

I've toyed with it before and am trying it now with my St. Thomas team.  Milwood is right.  The coach that really knows combo defense is barretchap, but he's not talking.

At St. Thomas, I've been running a zone for years.  Switching to zone/press means that I have to practice more press to catch it up.  However, I think, if you ran it for a long time, then you'd be trying to get both to B+.   I suspect that you don't want to overdo it and try to get all your team IQs in 3 sets up to the same level you would get in only 2.  That wouldn't leave enough individual practice time (especially at D2 & D3 where development is crucial).

I couldn't compare fouls yet, but I am sure that press IQ will help generate more turnovers (the lack of which just kills zone).   I have an expectation that D3 may not be the place to hold a combo defense in place permanently.  

I generally run half the minutes under the press that I run under the zone. I view zone as the primary (so maybe 15-17 min) and the press as a secondary since it only runs up to the half court (so maybe 7-10 min). Generally my guys end up in the B's range for press and A- to A range for zone.

ive never really noticed a benefit of half court press, any time ive looked at it i figured 1 extra TO per game, but i run zone OR press at kansas now so that is something ill look at, because its the first time in a long time ive heard anyone say it was actually useful to them. old admin said HCP only comes into play on 20% of equations so im pretty sure you want to focus on your base set IQ and get what you can in press, 10m is plenty it seems to me. 

I've done this a low D1 for a full 4 year cycle now.  20 min in Zone, 5 in Press, by senior year I had guys with A/A+ in Zone and B/B- in press (granted high HS GPA).  There was another post like this where I had put some hard numbers/letters, but those kids just graduated.

I play it primarily as a late game setting option.  There are a handful of games where I'll play HCP/Zone as a defense throughout, but generally I tinkered with it as a way to be able to play press late game with kids that have some useful skill in it.  FWIW that cohort lost in second round of NT after upsetting a 3 seed in round 1.

The more I play, the more I think that IQ in sets is more and more valuable.  I'm starting to think A+ in senior year is worth a lot, so I'm only doing the zone/press combo on two of my 5 teams.

I've never noticed a big difference in fouls, primarily playing Zone pushes the foul number down usually.  In regards to turnovers, there is a bump up, but nothing like running a FCP exclusively.